A decade after getting the project off the ground, Alexandre Beaudoin, biodiversity advisor at the University of Montreal, says Darlington remains a work in progress, a puzzle with plenty of concrete gaps to fill with biodiversity — but one that’s expanding, piece by piece.

Beaudoin was inspired by the Appalachian corridor that runs from Vermont’s Green Mountains to Quebec’s Eastern Townships. At the time, the closest example to something akin to an urban green corridor was New York City’s High Line.

“We started thinking about what we can do to help the biodiversity in the city. How can we do the same thing at the Montreal scale, at the Côte-des-Neiges scale?”

After Mount Royal’s fox population was decimated by illness in 2010, Beaudoin told himself he had to help bring the animal back to the mountain. Knowing the railway that ran within a couple of kilometres of the mountain was popular with foxes, he saw a possible solution in creating a pathway for foxes to migrate between the two locations. Though the animal reappeared on Mount Royal before he could launch the corridor project, he says the corridor ultimately made Côte-des-Neiges a more welcoming space for the animal.

“We have this beautiful story that two years ago a mother fox came to give birth in one of the gardens that we’re working on,” Beaudoin says. “This one stopped there because it was quiet enough with plants, trees, flowers.”

Downhill from the mountain, the Darlington squad set up birdhouses around the community garden, along with rocks to make the space more hospitable for reptiles. On what were patches of sidewalk grass, they planted flowers to attract pollinators: milkweed for monarch butterflies and New England asters for bees. The pollinator meadow also doubles as a rain garden, accumulating sought-after water for parched animals.

One species, the northern cardinal, is becoming a familiar sight on the corridor. Beaudoin says the bird is expanding its range northward because of climate change, and the corridor’s berry bushes and seed plants invite the birds to stop for a snack.

But a new focus on rebuilding humans’ connection to nature has caused the project’s purpose to change since its inception, says Beaudoin.

More green space in Montreal means more space for people to congregate, socialize and exercise in nature — activities that contribute to stress management. Green spaces beautify public space by covering up the less than inspiring sight of concrete roadways, absorbing the clamour of traffic as well as carbon emissions and reducing urban heat island effects.

As well as restoring the city’s biodiversity, the corridor also puts food in people’s stomachs by planting food gardens of non-native edible plants. MultiCaf, a non-profit food aid organization, harvests food grown on the corridor, with the biggest bulk of fruits and vegetables sprouting from the former racetrack. In the summer, the bounty is sold at reduced cost to thousands of low-income locals, about half of whom are first-generation immigrants in an area considered a food desert.

Jean-Sébastien Patrice, MultiCaf’s executive director, counts up to 25 kinds of vegetables, from eggplants to radishes, and about a half-dozen varieties of fruit. The harvest totalled 3,000 kilograms worth of food in 2024, Patrice says, and an estimated 10,000 kilograms in 2025.

However, the project “goes beyond ecology and diet,” Patrice says. “It crystallizes the human spirit between people from different parts of the world,” he says, adding the people who enjoy the low-cost food take part in every step of the process, from cultivation to decision-making and distribution.

Andrew Gonzalez, McGill professor and co-director of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science, works with cities across the province to create green corridor maps. Montreal, he says, is one of the country’s leading cities in building networks of interconnected green space to reduce the impact of urban sprawl

“This connective tissue … allows you to get more than the sum of the total area of your protected spaces and your green spaces,” he says, adding that the project addresses target 12 from the COP15 United Nations biodiversity conference: increasing the connectivity of green spaces in urban and densely populated areas.

While Darlington is Montreal’s first ecological corridor project, the city is now home to several other corridor projects.

However, change comes with some resistance. Yolande Moreau, sustainable development project manager at Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough, says progress has been complicated by having to wait for the city’s transit authority and light-rail network to complete infrastructure projects.

“We’re not able to do anything very structural,” Moreau says, “so what we’ve been focusing on with Beaudoin and his team is doing these small initiatives.”

It’s possible locals could lose some parking spaces when tree planting and sidewalk curb extensions are proposed, she says, admitting that many of the neighbourhood’s low-income newcomers work odd hours and aren’t well served by public transport.

Eco-gentrification is another obstacle, Tarrah Beaudoin (no relation to Alexandre), a consultant with the corridor, adds. “Some people are saying that we should go faster with building the corridor, but if we do it too fast, maybe that’s going to jack up the prices for the people living in (the neighbourhood),” she says.

Regularly checking in with the community and asking locals what they want out of Darlington is key to keeping residents on board, Tarrah Beaudoin says. Each year, the crew hosts a community barbecue, and while locals may come to munch on hot dogs, she uses the opportunity to ask locals what they like and dislike about the corridor. Such interactions she says have paid off in getting residents more involved in Darlington initiatives and have even succeeded in getting upset locals to embrace the project.

Ultimately, the level of commitment and collaboration from the community is what determines if an urban green corridor fails or flourishes, Alexandre Beaudoin says, and no one-size-fits corridor blueprint exists for other boroughs, let alone other cities.